


liberation is costly

by lovemutt



Series: teeth and lungs [1]
Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Abuse, Brainwashing, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Conditioning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fallout 3 - Freeform, Fallout 3 is my favorite game, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Mutation, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Violence, Slavery, The Pitt (Fallout 3)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovemutt/pseuds/lovemutt
Summary: Clyde can't remember what came before the Pitt, but he can remember everything that came after, and for once, he has feelings about it... Bad feelings. Feelings that might make him do something drastic.





	liberation is costly

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about my character, Clyde, and flesh out his backstory a bit more. He's a favorite character of mine, and SomeRainMustFall miiiight have inspired me to work on Clyde with their fic, Burn It Down, lmao.

They threw him in there. They threw him in there to die.

 

The steelyard, some place with more than its share of dead bodies around every corner, and trogs where there were none. The rot clung in the air and burned his nose even when he was in Downtown, like just being in the Mill and any closer to it than a mile had soaked the smell into his skin. It was dangerous, the most dangerous place in the Pitt, and Clyde would personally take the repercussions for back-talking a raider rather than go running through that bleak death trap.

 

And that’s why he threw himself towards the raider when Midea was grabbed to go in. He begged them to take him instead, pleaded, said he’d do anything. It didn’t take much convincing, and Midea was thrown back with a look of shock and bleak acceptance over her face as she realized she couldn’t argue.

 

All his found family watched helplessly as he was dragged away to his death. He didn’t blame them, and he was happy they stopped. A few looked confused, Clyde had been stoic and near uncaring ever since Ashur himself threw him in Downtown as a child barely 13, and the outburst must have made no sense in their minds. It almost didn’t make sense in Clydes, but once he looked past what he was told, what Ashur taught him, what he knew he was there for, he understood. He always understood. 

 

It was hard to remember he was human when the raiders beat the concept of being a weapon into him.

 

He spent weeks in the steelyard. Maybe a month. Maybe months. He couldn’t keep track, the second they opened the door and threw him in, he was fighting for his life. Barely 17, draped in torn clothes and holding no weapons, he remembered trying to find anything of use as he tip-toed around the first few feet in the steelyard, feeling fear for the first time since he can remember as he heard the trogs hiss and scurry around just around the corner. He managed to pick up an axe, sharp and strong, something to swing as hard as he could.

 

Creeping around was the worst part. The trogs attacked him the second they caught his scent, and the hissed ‘ _ delicious…!’ _ that they screeched at him as they charged made his stomach churn to even think about. He ended up finding his way into the air vents, surprising the mutants was easier than trying to take them on from the ground, and soon enough he lived up there. He knew all he had to do was find an ingot, something to earn his way back into the Mill, back into Downtown, but for all his searching the trogs always ran him off, or the wildmen drew his attention from his search.

 

The air started to do something to him. He didn’t notice it at first, the changes, but soon enough the normal radiation scars on his arms got redder and redder, his voice cracked more often, his hair fell out in clumps. He knew what was happening. He knew it even before he found a corpse and his stomach growled and he didn’t even think twice. He new it before walking on all fours became the easier way to get around for him.

 

Clyde didn’t want to be a trog.

 

So he found a way around it. He searched with a renewed vigor, using his air vents as an advantage to search room to room in the building he found, mostly cleared of trogs now from his previous searches. He finally left the building, taking too long to find his bearings on two feet again as he explored.

 

And just as quickly as he was thrown in, he found his way out. An ingot sat in a pile of rubble beneath a hulking container of debris, and his hands found it with little care for his surroundings. Clyde would never run that fast again in his life, making a beeline for the exit door. He flung it open, hearing the raiders just behind the gate all stand and draw their guns before he saw them.

 

They remarked at how surprised they were to see him alive, one commenting on how much his appearance went to shit since they last saw him, and Clyde had to agree, the heat of the Mill made his scars burn fiercely, he could feel just how wide-spread they were now. Right then and there, Clyde knew what he had to do.

 

Midea was happy to see him, she hugged him and just like always, he didn’t hug back. For all anyone knew, Clyde was still him. To the slaves, he was the poor boy abandoned by the bastards in Uptown. To the bastards in Uptown, he was their personal little weapon, there to snuff out any hope of rebellion.

 

And so Clyde fought his way to the top. His hair began to regrow once Midea forced him to start eating again and he was allowed the little rest he could get in between the raiders barking orders. The scars that covered nearly every body part he had went back to their usual sickly color instead of red, and the rest of the mutations that began were slowed, reversed, and eventually gone after a few weeks. 

 

During those weeks, he used everything he had learned in the steelyard to try his luck in The Hole. Moving around unseen, even if he was just spotted, where to aim the killing blow with his axe, when to attack… He looted the bodies of those he killed, and before he knew it Clyde was the new champion, his axe and his new shotgun his best friends in his fights.

 

To the slaves, he was Clyde. To the raiders, he was a weapon. Both were right.

 

The slaves seemed betrayed as Clyde took his spot back in Uptown, and a few of the raiders remarked about his disobedience. ‘ _ You were supposed to watch them, dumbass! _ ’ was a common one. A few threats to restart his ‘ _ training _ ’ until he learned his place again. He remembers clear as day walking around Haven, the gnawing feeling of doing something wrong as he’d never been allowed to walk the area without a master nearby, and being grabbed suddenly.

 

Krenshaw has him by his throat in a second, eyes narrowed, teeth barred like he was some kind of animal. ‘ _ What do you think you’re doing?’ _ was his question, though Clyde couldn’t tell if he actually wanted an answer or not. The grip on his throat tightened, and Clyde’s vision went starry for a brief moment before he was released. ‘ _ Go see Ashur, boy. You’ve really fucked up this time. _ ’ oh, he saw Ashur alright.

 

As he walked into Haven, eyes half-lidded, memories of the ‘ _ training _ ’ he’d been forced to endure for the sake of Ashur’s slavery business flooding back. Every hall in the building had been the keeper of Clyde’s own blood at one point or another, either knocked from his mouth or dripping from his nose if he wasn’t quick enough with a ‘ _ yessir _ ’, not quick enough to respond to an order. Saying no hurt now, it made his teeth ache from the memories, like something was trying to pull him back in time to remember, and just the thought of not following an order made his skin crawl and his body want to curl in on itself as he remembered what happened if he said no.

 

Ashur was Brotherhood once. He mentioned it throughout the training. Said having an inside agent would be good for the cause. Said Clyde was a good soldier like a terrified child would be proud to be tortured daily. He had truly lost his mind.

 

And that’s why Clyde didn’t go to Ashur. He found himself in a room he wasn’t allowed in even when he was in training, and he could only imagine how much he wasn’t allowed in it now… But he knew what he was doing. Wernher had told him.

 

The slaves saw him as an ally. The raiders saw him as a tool.

 

Clyde walked into the room he’d been denied access to for so long, and there stood a woman he’d seen around Haven before. She always seemed sympathetic to him, but always agreed that it was for the  _ greater good _ . Ashur’s wife, Sandra. She didn’t notice him, her back turned to him as she worked on something, writing frantically as she murmured to herself. Clyde felt wrong being in there, especially with his blood-stained skin and muddied boots.

 

Leather armor clung to his skin, hot and cracked from the fighting he’d done to get this far, and the smell of rot still clung to him from the steelyard even after all this time. Everything on him, from his skin to his armor was filthy, covered in rust and grim and blood, and in the clean room around him he was made ever so aware of just how bad the conditions the slaves were kept in were.

 

His skin felt hot, even in the relative coolness of Haven, and he couldn’t tell if it was from not knowing anything but the fire of the Mill and the sting of radiation, or from the layers of grime in scars on his face.

 

His hands found the edges of the baby’s creche, leaving what was no doubt dirty marks in the place of a spotless bed. The young baby stirred briefly, eyes fluttering before she turned her head and fell fast asleep once more, and Clyde felt his heart do the same. She was a cure to the radiation that caused the marks on his face, something to help end the slavery that existed just beyond the walls of her home, the daughter of the bastard that told him the brainwashing and torture of a child was neccesary so the slaves he kept didn’t overthrow him.

 

She was a means to an end.

 

There was a beeping noise from a terminal near Sandra, and she tilted her head to look at the screen. Just a second later, she whirled around, eyes wide and face full of fear as she opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came out, and she then moved forward, hands extending and one word finding its way out.

 

‘ _ Please _ .’

 

He remembered saying please. He remembered saying please a lot. He remembered looking to Sandra in fear and her turning her head and walking away. He remembered Ashur telling him he would be an amazing soldier one day. He remembered the beatings, the manipulation, the brainwashing, he remembered blacking out because they gave him a trigger word and he didn’t even realize, and he remembered coming back to reality with a gun in his hand and a dead slave feet from him. Clyde remembered.

 

So he reached out too, snatching Sandra’s wrist and narrowing his eyes at her. ‘ _ Don’t wake the baby. _ ’

 

The slaves saw him as an ally. The raiders saw him as a new threat.

 

Clyde walked out of Haven with an infant in arms, cradling her close to his dirty leather armor, a trail of death behind him and two dead parents gored in their own respective offices. He walked from Haven and into Downtown, eyes cast downward onto the infant as she stared confused at all the noise and the earmuffs Clyde had placed on her head, glancing up only to shoot himself a clear path through.

 

The slaves saw him as a hero. The raiders saw him as a monster.

 

Both were right.


End file.
